Will the novelty of Erling Haaland scoring – again and again - wear off?

Assessments of the Manchester City striker’s first season in English football have been reduced to a counting exercise.

FULL FLIGHT: Manchester City's Erling Haaland celebrates scoring again. Picture: Nick Potts/PA Wire.

There was another Erling Haaland Moment at the weekend. If you didn’t see what happened, I’m afraid I’m going to spoil the ending for you: he scores. The moment came about 20 minutes into Man City’s game at Brighton when Ederson sent forward a long goal-kick. Haaland chased it. Robert Sánchez, Brighton’s goalkeeper, came and missed it. All that remained was Haaland and the Brighton defender Adam Webster, shoulder to shoulder, vying for the ball.

Football has a familiar and established lexicon for describing what happened next. You could say Webster “lost out”. You could say he “came off second best”. You might even say he was “shrugged” or “muscled” off the ball. And yet somehow none of these phrases would really do justice to what happened. Webster just sort of … detonates.